Commentary : Final Exam 23-24 (Patreon)

Time to discuss the final pages of Final Exam and the comic as a whole now that it has been complete. 

Unlike Open Trade I did have all this story written out before hand. But when I sat down to draw I changed up the page layouts to try to move through content faster. Which resulted in the original script ending in 15 pages and not 24. So I did end up having to do rewrites on the fly as we got closer and closer to the end. I still wanted the comic to be 24 pages. Overall ending with the two discovering that they were stuck. 

Letting things sit longer I starting to think of how they would adapt and what an opening to return to their former selves would look like. And I liked the idea of them choosing to stay with the new lives they have landed in. With all the good and bad that comes with it. 

Even then I still wasn’t sure I was going to land with 24 pages. There was a version where we end on page 23 with them making the agreement. But I liked the idea of ending with a bit of chaos. With people asking about Ella’s ethnicity I did start to toy with the idea of ending on the “What’s Diwiali?” as a way of establishing her ethnicity that wasn’t really established at the beginning. And that Morris was equally oblivious to what Ella was, even in her skin. 

The last page was also included for discussions about family. It was something that kept coming up in my brain. I didn’t want to have scenes of them explaining this to families in this story. But I knew I couldn’t exactly have them agree to stay without any mention of their families. It would end up being that they would be lying to each other’s families forever and not seeing their own, which wouldn’t be great. 

Maybe someday in the future I can do a “One-Shot” to show them doing some visiting of family. 

With this story taking place before Open Trade, always an option that older versions of these characters could still show up. Even if they are in Michigan. Who knows, “Ella” could still be in school by the time Open Trades starts. Although if Young-mi spends any extended time in South Korea, Ella could graduate before they get a time to meet. 

I don’t know where this fits in but more of a fun fact, every story has a working title before it comes out for you all to read. They aren’t really special. Kind of blunt, but all my files and folders have the working title on them. This one was Math Swap. Open Trade’s working title is Streamer.